Today its members are restless, grumbling about an Obama White House that claims to be the most transparent ever.

From big issues such as the tapping of a Fox reporters’s phone to the media blackout imposed on the president’s golf game with Tiger Woods, the chorus goes up: When it comes to the press, President Obama may be even worse than . . . Nixon.

Much as I disagree with most Obama policies, and much as I suspect every press gripe about the uniquely uncooperative Obama White House is spot-on, there’s a bigger problem baked into the structure: The whole arrangement is rooted in pretense.

I well remember my first day at work as a newly minted George W. Bush appointee. When I walked through the West Wing, the first thing I saw was Karl Rove in a corner briefing three famous TV news personalities.

I don’t know what he was talking about, but the image was striking: On the TV screen, these men all appeared formidable and authoritative.

Here, they looked like baby birdies eagerly opening their mouths for the little worm mama bird was about to drop down their gullets.

And I thought to myself, “I used to be one of those baby birdies.”

Nor did I blame either side: Info is the currency of the trade, for those doling it out as well as for those trying to get it.

Even so, it’s worth asking how much reporting actually comes out of the White House press. Because the main pretense of the arrangement is that simply being there means reporters know what an administration’s up to.

The illusion is especially important for television, which depends on imagery. If you look inside the front gate of the White House to the right, you’ll see a row of network cameras, each placed to frame a reporter against a White House backdrop. Every network has its own specific spot and angle: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc.

It doesn’t matter if all the reporters are doing is reading out the summaries they’ve been given peppered with a few quotations. What matters is the image.

Or take a televised presidential press conference in, say, the East Room. Moments before the president appears at the podium, the White House communications team passes out either the remarks or a summary with highlights.

At which point the TV guys go into their stand-ups, informing viewers at home what the president is going to say.

The impression: These guys are letting their audiences in on what they’ve ferreted out.
The reality: They only learned what the president was going to say two minutes before the rest of the nation did.

Maybe that’s why almost none of the big news stories — from Watergate to the National Security Agency spying to Lois Lerner’s IRS targeting — are broken by the White House press.

Still, each side finds the arrangement convenient. For the press, being part of the White House means that security, travels and other hassles are handled, and sooner or later there’s the likelihood of a one-on-one interview with the president in addition to access to other officials.

But as much as almost every White House complains about bad press, presidents also find it useful to have reporters from all the major news outlets within their walls.

Most Americans probably don’t realize reporters are not walking about the corridors but quarantined in their little confines — until they’re trundled into the briefing room or office and fed what the White House wants to tell them.

Then there are the egos, on which there is bipartisan agreement. In my time, one nationally known reporter infamously complained about how the shrimp had run out on the press charter.

On another flight, more than one press couple was caught in flagrante delicto — with partners definitely not their spouses — while aboard the plane traveling overseas with the president. When the press hollers about transparency, it’s not these stories they have in mind.

Now, there are those White House newsmen who do manage to do the one thing their position puts them in a position to do: hold a president accountable for what he says and does.

Reporters such as ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Fox’s Ed Henry do this well, regularly asking the hard questions that challenge the White House line.

It’s at least worth asking if one reason President Obama now comes across as so weak and pathetic is that the White House press corps basically coddled him for his first five years in office.

Alas, for all the high dudgeon from our correspondents about how mean Obama is to them, a White House presser is a tame and lame thing these days.

And these same reporters then wonder why President Obama has concluded he and his team can blow them off.